Emperor of Rage: Chapter 18

It’s ten in the morning by the time I find myself standing on the roof of my loft building, staring out over the city.

The air is crisp, the sun is out. I barely notice.

…Not just because I’m fucking exhausted, either.

I take another long pull from the coffee cup in my hand. I set it down on the railing and run my hands over my face, rubbing the grit from my eyes.

If I keep up these games with Freya, my sleep patterns are going to be fucked.

I’ve dug deeper into her now. It’s not just that Freya is a night owl leaning into the whole goth thing way too hard. She’s got a real—albeit, rare—condition that makes sunlight literally toxic to her.

Her defiant refusal to come over the other time makes sense now.

I frown as I take another sip of coffee.

Yes, I looked into her more. Not just to find out how she’s connected to any of the bad shit from my past. I already know all that.

But because she’s under my skin now, more than I care to admit. There’ve been glimmers of that since before last night. But after I floored it up to Montreal to chase her and fuck her, she’s been in my head constantly, an echo I can’t shake.

Digging into her, I might add, also entailed smiling darkly as I peered at her web history, scrolling through the filthy, deviant, hardcore shit she likes to read and watch.

Bad girl.

I stand on the roof, staring out at the world below, but all I can see is her face. Her body. The way she looked at me as I left her. The way her lips parted, her breath hitched…

Fuck.

I was her first time.

At twenty-six.

I could wonder how it is that a woman with her looks and her particularly dark kinks got to that age without ever having been fucked before.

But I don’t have to.

I can read between the lines of “edgy kinks” and “hasn’t indulged in physical contact” better than most and see the writing on the wall.

There’s darkness in her past.

Someone hurt her.

Damaged, it would appear, recognizes damaged.

Freya’s whispered words outside her hotel room ram into my brain again.

I’ll be good.

It was a simple phrase, innocent enough. But it sliced into me like a knife to the gut. The way she said it—soft, submissive, like she’d folded herself into something fragile—triggered something dark inside me I thought I’d buried long ago. A part of me I thought I’d locked away.

She pulled me back to a place I’ve tried to forget. To a time when those same words were my lifeline, my plea for mercy.

I’ll be good.

I close my eyes as the memory of those dark years spent in a prison of my grandfather’s making claws its way unbidden to the surface and the past threatens to drown me.

Those were black times. They came after the night of blood and terror at my home, when my family was killed by flame and bullets as I hid in the deep end of the pool, breathing smoky air through a garden hose.

The night I saw Kir prowling the perimeter of the carnage after I finally came up from the depths.

After that night, I went to live with my grandfather, Kasper.

Most people’s memories of their grandfathers involve a warm smile, a rocking chair, maybe a woodworking hobby, or fishing.

Mine taste like poison.

My grandfather was a Nazi sympathizer, a bitter, vicious, devil of a monster. It wasn’t just me at his country home deep in the Norwegian woods on the edge of the lake. There were two other boys already living there when I arrived: Jonas and Filip.

Like me, they were without family, from broken, blackened pasts. But Kasper didn’t take us in out of kindness.

He did it out of cruelty and sadism, because of some fucked-up, Nazi-influenced idea that he wanted to mold us into “true Aryans”.

Those years, filled with Kasper repeatedly beating his hateful, malicious doctrine into us, were hell. They were bloody and terrifying.

Of the three of us, I was the one in the middle. I could weather Kasper’s malevolence and his cruelty, but I never once bought into his twisted world view and poisonous rhetoric.

Jonas went another way. An orphan from the streets of Oslo, he too could withstand Kasper’s cruelty. But where I held my ground against his brainwashing, Jonas dove in headfirst. He was Kasper’s favorite. His prize student. His perfect little hate-filled Nazi pet.

And then there was Filip.

Filip, with the kind heart and broken smile. Filip, who just wanted someone he could call family.

He never stood a chance.

I’ll be good.

I flinch, remembering Filip saying those words to Kasper over and over, desperate to make the beatings stop, praying that this time, this one time, Kasper would be satisfied.

He never was. Not with Filip, nor with me.

I’m not that boy anymore. But Freya’s words—her submission—pulled something out of me that I haven’t felt in years. It made me feel like that helpless, broken kid all over again, and I hated it.

I left after she said it, slipped away into the night without a word, not because I wanted to, but because I needed to. I needed distance, space to breathe and to get my head on straight. But even now, hours later, the sound of her voice still lingers, a ghost in my mind. It pulls at something raw inside me, something that should’ve damn well stayed buried.

I’ll be good.

I clench my fists tightly.

She makes me feel like I’m losing control.

I’ve spent years building walls, fortifying myself against the world. She’s removing the bricks one by one. And I can’t afford that.

I force myself to turn away from the balcony and shake off the thoughts of Freya. Tonight isn’t about her. Tonight is about Kenzo and Annika’s wedding.

The church is filled with Yakuza and Bratva soldiers. This should be—okay, is—a powder-keg ready to blow, but that’s the whole reason we’re here: to bury the bloodshed. To stop the spiraling chaos before the whole city turns into war zone.

The knives might be put away, but the tension in the air is palpable, as if everyone here knows that this peace is a fragile, easily shattered illusion.

I frown, rubbing my eyes. I still haven’t managed to sleep. Earlier, chaos erupted on both sides of this supposed truce when no one could find Hana, Annika, or Freya after the bachelorette party.

I, of course, knew precisely where they were.

But I couldn’t exactly say anything. I couldn’t reveal that I’d tracked Freya all the way to fucking Montreal by hacking into her various social accounts and IP-tracing her.

In a fucked-up way, today was slightly amusing, watching everyone scramble, trying to track down the bride and her friends. But twenty minutes ago, the three of them showed up looking bedraggled and hungover as shit in an Uber all the way from Canada.

I may have taken a particularly smug satisfaction in noticing the vicious purple marks all over Freya’s neck.

My marks.

I stand at the front, watching Annika make her way down the aisle toward Kenzo, escorted by that fuckhead Kir. Kenzo waits at the altar, stoic as ever, his expression unreadable to most.

I, however, can read my cousin like a book.

It’s been like that since I was eleven and escaped the hell I’d lived in with my grandfather. That’s when I came to live with my aunt Astrid and my three cousins, Kenzo, Takeshi, and Hana. Tak and Hana are quite a few years younger than Kenzo. So when I showed up, almost his age, we became thick as thieves.

To me, his feelings are clear: he hates that he’s being forced into this arranged marriage. At the same time, Kenzo’s been the male head of this family since he was a boy. “Family duty” is something he lives and breathes. So even if this isn’t what he’d have chosen for himself, he’s going to do it, because that’s just who he is.

When Annika stops in front of him, it’s just the two of them and the priest up there. No best man, no maid of honor.

My eyes slide to the side, across the aisle, and my jaw tightens.

Freya is standing beside Kir in the front row, wearing a sleek black dress that hugs her body in all the right places. Her dark hair catches the soft glow of the chandeliers, her expression unreadable.

I let my gaze feast on the marks on her neck that the gallon of concealer is trying valiantly to cover.

Dark, sultry flashbacks hit me like a fist to the gut. Last night. The feel of her body against mine. Her gasps. Her submission.

The way she broke so beautifully for me.

I try to focus on the ceremony, but my eyes keep drifting back to her. I shouldn’t be so fixated. She’s mine, yes, but this feels…different. Personal. That’s dangerous.

The ceremony proceeds as expected. The vows are spoken, Kenzo and Annika exchange rings. But there’s a strange energy in the air, something I can’t quite pinpoint. My instincts are prickling, warning me that something’s about to go wrong. I scan the crowd, my hand inching toward the gun tucked into my jacket. I can feel the tension building every second.

Kenzo and Annika say I do. Then—shockingly, given that I genuinely thought the two of them couldn’t stand each other—my cousin grabs his new bride, cups her face, and kisses her with an intensity that makes her melt against him.

I can’t help but smirk.

Fuck me. Maybe that was the premonition that I felt tingling at the back of my neck. Not impending danger, just my cousin deciding to go totally off script and actually show some affection toward his enemy-turned-arranged-bride.

“Shit,” Hana mutters, clapping along with everyone else and shaking her head as she shoots a look my way. “Who the hell had that on their fake wedding bingo card?”

Next to her, Tak snorts. “I don’t know what the fuck his angle is there, but⁠—”

“C’mon,” Hana sighs. “Maybe his angle is that he wants to kiss his new bride?”

“Those two do not want to be kissing each other, trust me,” Tak snickers. “One of them is fucking with the other one right now, I’m just curious why⁠—”

I whirl, every sense jangling as the front doors of the church slam inward and splinter into a thousand pieces.

A van comes crashing through them, careening down the center aisle. The congregation erupts into chaos, screaming, scattering in every direction as it screeches to a halt in the middle of the church.

My body reacts before my mind can catch up. My gun is in my hand, and I’m moving toward the van even as I glance over my shoulder to roar at Tak to get Sota and Hana the fuck out of here. But Sota’s men are already on that, and Takeshi is right behind me, his own gun raised.

“Stay back,” I hiss at him as screaming fills the church, along with the dust and debris from the crash. Then my head yanks around the other way, my gaze lasering through the dust and debris-filled air.

To Freya.

My heart lurches in my chest when I see her frozen in the crowd, her face pale with shock. All I can think about is making sure she’s okay. I can’t explain it or rationalize it, I just need to know that she’s safe.

I tear my gaze from her, focusing on the van as I approach slowly. There’s no movement inside, but I keep my gun trained on the driver’s side door as I creep closer.

Dust still chokes the air. People are still screaming in the background as guards from both sides bark orders and load guns.

But I’m utterly focused on the door as I make my way closer, every step taking an eternity, the tension building with each second.

“Out of the van!” I roar. “Now!”

There’s no response. I move closer.

“Out!!”

Still nothing.

Yeah, fuck this. I charge the rest of the way to the door, grit my teeth, take a dust-filled breath, then grab the handle and yank it open before jamming the barrel of my gun inside.

It’s empty.

No driver. No passenger. Nobody in the back.

What the fuck?

I frown as I turn away, my eyes catching Kenzo’s where he’s standing at the altar, his body shielding Annika.

“It’s empty!” I yell at him.

He frowns. Then, in slow motion, everything changes.

Kenzo’s confused expression suddenly morphs into one of pure panic. His eyes widen as his face pales.

“GET BACK!!” he roars, jumping down from the chancel and bolting toward me. “MAL! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM⁠—”

Oh fuck.

Move.

Just as I lunge away, the van beside me suddenly morphs into orange, bubbly liquid. I don’t think. I just whirl, tackle Takeshi, and slam him behind an empty pew just as the whole fucking van detonates with the force of the sun.

It feels like getting hit by a freight train at top speed.

The impact of the blast shatters and splinters the pew Tak and I are crouching behind, punching into me hard enough to lift me off my feet and send me flying backward as the air is sucked from my lungs.

For a moment, the world is still and quiet except for a high, whining sound ringing in my ears—but muffled, as if coming through cotton balls.

I blink, choking gray dust from my cracked lips as I raise my head, only then realizing that I’m on the ground.

Holy. Fuck.

Dust and debris fill the air, choking the church with smoke. I can vaguely hear screams and people scrambling for cover, but it all sounds distant, muffled by the ringing in my ears.

For a moment, my vision swims, my mind struggling to catch up with the chaos around me. But then, through the haze of smoke, I force myself to sit up, my gun still held tightly in my hand.

The van is engulfed in flames, the heat scorching the air around it. Smoke billows out in thick, black plumes, and I can hear the crackling of flames as they consume the wreckage. I push to my feet, ignoring the pain in my side as I scan the room for any sign of the attackers. Tak crawls out from under a shattered pew, flashing me a thumbs up sign as he coughs violently.

All I can think about is Freya.

I can’t see her through the smoke.

I need to find her.

Takeshi is suddenly at my side, grabbing my arm, trying to pull me toward the exit. “Come on!” he barks into my ear. “We gotta go!”

I shove him off, my eyes still scanning the room. I won’t leave until I see her. Until I know she’s safe.

Then, through the smoke, I spot her through an open side door—crouched behind a car outside, Kir and his men forming a protective circle around her. Her face is pale, her eyes wide with shock and horror.

But she’s alive.

I’m not sure how to process the feeling of relief that floods through me.

I shouldn’t care this much. I shouldn’t feel this need to protect her, to make sure she’s okay, but I do. And it’s pissing me off.

“Mal!” Tak roars. “Let’s fucking go!”

I nod, grimacing as he helps me to my feet and out the side door. Hana rushes over to me from where she’s been standing with Sota and his men. She hugs me fiercely, sobbing into my chest as I wrap a bloodied arm around her.

“All good, sis,” I grunt. “All in one piece.”

She pulls back and winces when she looks up at me. “Fuck, Mal, you’re bleeding.”

I frown, bringing a hand up to touch my temple. It comes away red and wet.

Oh.

“I’m fine,” I say. “I’ll get it checked out.”

Hana still wants to fuss over me, but I’ve got other things to worry about besides a cut on my head.

Kenzo and Annika are both unharmed, though Kenzo looks dazed and slightly fire-blackened. Sota is okay, too, and I grin when the tough old bastard tells me that in his day car bombs “were a lot more effective”.

I glance around the flaming wreckage as approaching sirens wail in the distance.

Whoever was behind this knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t just an attack—it was a message.

My head instinctively whips around to look at Freya. She’s still with Kir, joined now by Annika. She’s hugging her friend, shaken and terrified, but when she looks over Annika’s shoulder and sees me, she stiffens. I watch her marked, bruised throat bob as she swallows. I watch that furtive fire flicker in her eyes as they lock with mine.

Yeah, this was a message all right.

Someone tried to hurt what’s mine.

And may God have mercy on their souls when I find out who they are.

Because I sure as fuck won’t.